Serbian National Broadcasting Service “Radio Television of Serbia” (RTS) broadcasting news last night continued its practice of using adjectives such as “Northmacedonian” or the pronoun “Northmacedonians” which is a manipulation of the public, because there is no such nation.
The Sports News article “The Bulgarians offer the Northmacedonians a joint basketball league!“, disobeys the guidelines of the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and once again makes up the term “Northmacedonians, even though the news about the guidelines was also published by the Serbian broadcaster RTSl.
Not only does the title contain manipulation, but at the start of the text there are mentions of “Northmacedonian media” and “Northmacedonian basketball”.
This abuse of the nouns and the adjectives is not only widepresent at RTS’ website, but it seems there wa some sоrt of automatic change from “Macedonian” to “North Macedonian”. This can be found even in news that is much older than the Prespa Agreement, on the 12th of February 2019 when the country’s name Macedonia was changed into North Macedonia, but we also read “Northmacedonian in the prior texts” (page 8 in the results).
According to the guidelines provided by the Macedonian MFA for the media, with the Prespa Agreement, the country’s official name is Republic of North Macedonia (Short name: “North Macedonia”. Nationality (citizenship): Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia. Therefore, the word “North Macedonians” used in the article’s title is absurd, as it doesn’t mean anything.
When it comes to country’s name and its official organs including other categories, the adjective form is “Macedonian”. MFA provides several examples: “The Macedonian Economy; the Health sector of the Republic of North Macedonia; Macedonian Art; Macedonian Music; Macedonian Agriculture; Macedonian Architecture; the Food Industry of North Macedonia etc. ” as incorrect.
MoI is strictly stressing that “other adjectival references, including “North Macedonian”, “Northern Macedonian”, “N. Macedonian” and “NorthMacedonian”, should not be used.
